Director Jeffrey Walker’s romantic comedy Ali’s Wedding begins with a lovestruck dope racing to the airport to prevent the object of his affection from boarding a plane: one of the most moth-eaten, hackneyed cliches in the romantic comedy playbook. Usually this sort of shenanigans occurs at the end of a film and not the beginning, however, which led me to wonder whether Walker might be getting the boilerplate stuff out of the way first.

No such luck. The story jumps back in time, detailing events leading up to this point. In other words – and this is telling of this sweet but unadventurous film, which mashes its emotions into your face like a custard pie – we will sit through the cliche twice. At least some kind of point of difference is found in the unusual vehicle the cupid-struck titular protagonist (Osamah Sami) drives, which is a tractor.

Not long into the running time, Ali’s flamboyant cleric father Mahdi (Don Hany) declares, on the steps of his mosque, that the congregation will do their annual musical production a little differently this year, offering a more contemporary perspective. He envisions an outlandish comedy about Saddam Hussein, which is a particularly edgy conceit given Mahdi was once imprisoned by the dictator’s regime.

The writing on the wall suggests a community theatre type production, starring non-actors trying their darnedest, in scenes to be played strictly for laughs. At this point I realised the unsettling possibility that, on top of the twofold airport run, the film could be setting itself to introduce another double serving of corn: the amateur theatre production leading into the dash to the airport.

Ali’s Wedding’s screenplay was adapted from Good Muslim Boy, a memoir by the charismatic actor Osamah Sami, who does a fine job playing himself. Sami also co-adapted the screenplay, working with veteran scribe Andrew Knight (whose recent work includes Hacksaw Ridge and The Water Diviner) on a neatly packaged script. The approach feels reminiscent of a standup comedian recounting a true story; the key details are right, the smaller ones fine-tuned and decorated.

Under pressure to get admitted into medical school, Ali fails the test but lies about his grades. Scenes showing him rocking up to the University of Melbourne and pretending to be enrolled reminded me of the episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer pretends to be on the payroll of a big corporation, leading to him being fired from a job he never had.

But there’s a seriousness underneath Ali’s situation. Lying because he felt under pressure to be better than the son of his dad’s congregation rival, we know he is on borrowed time. He will get busted sooner or later, and his father will be humiliated.

In the meantime, Ali’s supposed success has made him a prize catch within the local Muslim community. In an arranged marriage, Mahdi pairs him with Yomna (Maha Wilson), the daughter of a parishioner.

This marriage obviously affects her as much as Ali, though that is hardly reflected in the focus of the screenplay, which affords Yomna few lines and no agency. Do scenes fleshing her character out lie on the chopping room floor? I wondered the same thing about a bizarrely small performance from Ryan Corr. Like its protagonist, the film is more interested in Dianne (Helana Sawires), a Lebanese-Australian medical student and the daughter of a local fish and chip shop owner.

One of the most moth-eaten, hackneyed cliches in the romantic comedy playbook: racing to the airport to stop a loved one boarding a plane. Photograph: Madman

Ali’s Wedding has been billed as “Australia’s first Muslim romcom”. That is true only if a distinction is drawn between “Muslim romcom” and “Greek/Muslim romcom.” Alex & Eve, released in 2015, is the latter – a sharper, funnier and sassier multicultural comedy, showcasing the benefits of a comedic performance from a supporting cast member who nails it (in this case a scene-stealing Tony Nikolakopoulos).

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There are no comparable, standout performances in Ali’s Wedding. The cast however are affable and good-natured, buoyed by a warmness in the screenplay that – for the most part – softens the sting of some wishy-washy writing.

This is a film in which you will hear a letter read aloud, with a voice-over saying the words “you dared to dream”, delivered without irony. It is, as they say, what it is. Perhaps most interesting is Walker’s depiction of the mosque congregation. With its politics and divided factions, this part of the film feels utterly authentic and is dramatically interesting. The tractor on the way to the airport, not so much.